Black Heart, page 31
'Jesus,' Enders said, flipping off the switch, 'you just know it's an election year. I can't turn on the radio or TV anymore without that guy Gottschalk mouthing off.'
'I don't know,' Borak said. 'Personally, I think he's got a helluva point. I don't like to see us being pushed all around Europe and the Middle East. I think it fucking stinks.' He looked up at Thwaite's approach. 'Look what the wind blew in.'
Ted Enders came around from behind his metal desk. 'Hey, Doug, how are you?' There was concern on his face. 'Jesus, we're all sorry as hell about what happened.' He shook his head. 'Christ, what's the world coming to?'
'Just what I've been saying.' Marty Borak gave a twisted smile.
'Hey, Thwaite, that bitch from the ME's office called. What's her name? Miranda, right?' he guffawed. 'Enjoy your evening
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at the slab factory?' His grin turned into a leer. 'Pork any hot stiffs while you were down there?'
Thwaite lunged at him and Enders leaped between them. 'Okay, okay, that's enough.' He turned to Borak. 'I swear, Marty, one of these days I'm gonna let him make hamburger outa your face.'
Borak was shaking, his face hot with rage. 'Big man.' His voice was thick with emotion. 'Me'n Teddy do all the dirty work and you get the citations.' He glared at Thwaite. 'Now you wanna take over the Chin thing after we've done all the leg work. Uh uh.'
Enders turned to look at Thwaite. "That true?'
'Nothing like it.' Thwaite was annoyed at having to justify ' his actions to his own unit. 'I needed access to the ME's office. I figured the Chin thing was as good as any.'
Enders pushed Borak away from him. 'See? How come you can't curb that big mouth of yours?'
Borak said nothing, went back to his work. Thwaite sorted through the accumulated mail on his desk but found he had no interest in any of it.
'Hey, Doug,' Enders said. 'I forgot. Flaherty wants to see you.'
Borak grunted. 'Yeah, he's been practising the hearts and flowers speech all morning.'
They're just schmucks, Thwaite thought, on his way over to the captain's office. Afraid I'll take the Chin murder away from them. That's a laugh. It's just another one of those troop-thekids-in-for-a-lecture-and-husde-'ern-back-out-on-the-street deals. They didn't have the goods. Chinatown did their own policing when it came to that.
He knocked on the door and it was opened immediately. The freckle-faced countenance of his captain confronted him. Thwaite, I was hoping you would stop by, though of course I would've understood if you'd called in sick.' He waved an arm 'Come on in.' He closed the door behind Thwaite's back. 'Christ,' he said, shaking his head, 'it was a shock to all of us. You know, as policemen we all live with the knowledge that we or our families might one day become targets
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but, I've found, when that day comes it never prepares you. Never...'
'Do I sound like Poly?'
Eliott could not take his eyes offher. 'You don't do anything like Poly,' he said huskily and buried his face in her breasts.
Kathleen smiled down at him as a goddess might at a favourite mortal. One arm came up, enfolded his head, stroking. After a time, she pried him gently from her, pushed him back down on the rumpled bed. Her flat palms made circles across his chest, nails flicking at his nipples. Then she reached up and slowly undid the clasp of the string of pearls around her neck. She knew how her raised arms threw her breasts out even more and she kept the pose, feeling the lick of Eliott's hot gaze as if it had a physical presence.
They were in the bedroom of Eliott Macomber's East SixtyStreet apartment. The walls were an ice green, the long low dresser, sleek armoir, wide bookcase all a blued metal that harmonized perfectly. But it was a cold room, like all the rooms in the apartment and Kathleen did not like it much. 'I love it,' she had told him when she had first seen it.
'What are you doing?'
'You'll see,' she said. She took the pearls and put them between her legs so that they made a vertical line bisecting her mons. 'Here,' she said softly, guiding his hands to the ends. 'Pull back and forth.'
Eliott did as he was told, watched with glittering eyes as the beads sank one by one into the furrow of her sex, reappeared at the bottom.
'Keep going,' she whispered, her eyelids fluttering.
'Now he could see the shine of moisture coating the pearls. 'Oh, wow,' he said a little breathlessly. 'Wow, wow, wow.'
'Yes, darling,' she said, her head falling back. 'See how wet they get. Don't they shine in the light?'
'Yes,' he said thickly. He seemed mesmerized by the back and forth movement of the pearls through her slit.
'That's enough,' she said, putting a hand over his. She took the pearls away from him. 'Now lie down, darling.' Putting a
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palm against his chest, gently compelling him to lie on his back. 'Relax.'
She crawled towards him until she was crouching between his legs. Her head came forward. 'Did your Poly do this to you?' Her hps opened and her tongue flicked out at him, running a line along the velvety length of his erection. 'Or this?' Her opened mouth swooped down over the head, down and down until her lips nizzled the crisp hair at the base.
Eliott groaned, his only answer.
Kathleen set a rhythm and kept to it, knowing from experience that this was what set men off. She was not out to tease him, not this time. She wanted to trigger in him an explosion he would not soon forget.
Every so often she would come up his shaft, working directly on the head with a very fast pull and suck, was gratified to see Eliott's buttocks straining off the shadowed sheets.
When she felt the trembling begin in the muscles on the insides of his thighs, she lifted her head for a moment, said over his sigh of disappointment, 'Now spread your legs wide, darling.'
'What?'
But her lips were back on him and Eliott had no choice but to do as she asked. He felt coolness there as the air seeped in and then a kind of pressure.
Kathleen increased the pressure on his penis and Eliott groaned, helpless. At the same time, she took the pearls, wet with her own sexual secretions, and pushed them one by one through the sphincter muscles. Six or seven went in before she stopped. Eliott was in the final stages and was barely controllable. He gasped and wheezed like as asthmatic. His muscles jumped and twitched as if pierced by a live wire.
Kathleen was happy now, drenched in his pleasure; pleasure she was providing him.
She felt the tightness in his scrotum, the slight but unmistakable quivering of his penis. Eliott gurgled and cried out and as he began to shoot into the depths of her mouth, Kathleen caught hold of the end of the string of pearls, pulling evenly so that pop! pop! pop! they left him along with his semen.
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Eliott cried out, his fingers like claws, bunching the sheets into sweaty clumps. Never in his life had he felt so much pleasure at one time. It had a physical presence, a kind of third dimension he had never known existed. 'Ah! Ah! Ah!' with each heartbeat, each pulse of bunding ecstasy.
His breathing was like a bellows for a long time afterwards. His body was bathed in a sweat and, lifeless, he watched Kathleen climbing over his body, licking it off.
At last he rolled over, stroking her. 'Kathy?' His fingers played with her breasts. 'Could we do that again? Now?'
Kathleen laughed and thought, Just like a child; only thinking of himself. What a boring lover. She touched his flaccid penis. 'I think we ought to give it a few minutes to recover, don't you?' She stretched her length out alongside him, touching him everywhere. Eliott shuddered, closed his eyes. She watched his face.
'I want to stay with you, Eliott.'
His arms came up, embraced her. 'Oh, God, yes. There's nothing I want more.' He licked his lips.
She pushed him back, hands on his shoulders. 'But no secrets, Eliott. I can't stand that. I couldn't stay if I knew there was something you were keeping from me.'
The telephone rang and he looked at it. It continued to ring.
'You'd better answer it.'
'I've got a better idea,' he said and reached for her. He brought one of her hands down to his crotch.
Kathleen picked up the receiver off the Plexiglass night table, handed it to him. He took it reluctantly.
'Hullo?' he said sullenly, looking at her. A voice spoke and he sat up. 'Yes, sir.' Looked at her again. 'Of course I'm alone.' He snapped his fingers, pointed to a pad and pencil on the night table. Kathleen got them for him. 'Okay.' He began to write. 'Got it,' he said, nodded unconsciously. 'Yes. Right away. He'll have it in an hour or so.' He hung up.
'What was that?' There was nothing at all to her voice.
'Ah, just business.' He tore off the top sheet, folded it in half. 'Nothing important.' He pushed the pad and pencil away from him. 'Now,' he said grinning, 'for the really important stuff.'
'No,' Kathleen said, moving away from him on the bed. Her
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eyes flashed and her voice was steel-edged. 'I told you, Eliott, I will not tolerate secrets. How can we trust each other?'
Eliott looked troubled. 'Listen, Kathy, you don't understand. This isn't something I can't just... I mean I hardly know you.'
'Then it u important.'
He said nothing, stared at her petulantly.
'All right,' she said. 'You don't think you can trust me yet. I'll show you how wrong you are.' She reached for the pad and pencil. Holding the point at a forty-five degree angle she began to scrub it back and forth lightly over the surface of the top sheet. 'Look at this,' she said, threw the pad over to him.
Eliott caught it on his lap, looked down. 'Jesus!' he breathed, staring at the imprint of his writing Kathleen had exposed. 'It's all here.'
Kathleen nodded. 'I could've read it any time and you would've known nothing about it.'
He put out a hand, clasped hers. 'Christ, Kathy. I'm sorry about this.' He looked down at the pad again, thinking. Then he took it and offered it to her. 'Here,' he said, 'read it. I do trust you.'
She smiled at him. 'I don't really care about it, Eliott.'
'No, read it, please. There is something... I haven't told you.'
Her eyes were liquid, their blue turned dark as the sea. Bars of shadow fell obliquely across her as she sat on her ankles. To Eliott, eternally overshadowed with women by Khieu, she was the embodiment of all he had ever wanted from the female species: sexy and smart and, especially, possessing an innocence belonging to another era.
He was, in short, enchanted so that when she said, 'I can't. You still don't trust me. I can tell,' he read the message to her himself just to prove how wrong she was:
'Holo must be at eleven-thirty hours. August three-one. Patrick's.'
Kathleen looked at him wide-eyed. 'It all sounds so cryptic,' she said in a puzzled tone. 'Like spies.' She leaned forward, took his hands in hers. Her face shone like a playful puppy's, all innocence and light. 'It it something juicy, Eliott? Ooh, I'll bet it is. Please tell me.' She cocked her head.
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It was madness, he knew. But it was also a chance to do something on his own. It was Khieu who could do everything, Khieu and Delmar Davis Macomber. He should've been my father's son, not me, Eliott thought bitterly for the thousandth time. But here was a chance to decide for himself.
The more Eliott contemplated it, the more inclined he was to tell her. He felt her fingers moving across his flesh, saw that languid, lustful look in her eyes that made him melt inside.
Involuntarily, he made a sound as her hand encompassed his hardened penis. His mind, unbidden, returned to the galaxy of pleasure she had introduced him to. He wanted to go back there so much that the desire was a physical, ache. But even more than that he remembered her spoken words. She thought him a man, not a boy and, thus, he became a man.
Kathleen's sleek head came forward, through bars of shadow and light so that it appeared to undulate like a serpent's uncoiling body.
He saw the pink of her tongue tip, bright and shining as it passed through a swath of light just before it touched him. His eyes closed as he felt the exquisite pleasure as she explored the nerve on the underside of the thickening head. 'Go on,' he said thickly. 'Go on.'
'Tell me,' she whispered just before her lips engulfed him in liquid heat that rushed up his body.
And he did; not, he told himself, because she had asked him to but because he himself wanted to.
'It's my father," he said through gritted teeth. 'He's got this crazy idea that the President of the United States can be created wholly out of his own mind.' Having said it, he thought it the funniest thing he had ever heard. He began to laugh, tears rolling down his cheeks unchecked. His chest heaved as he spoke. 'He's going ... he's going to -'
But that was as far as he got. There was a noise at the bedroom doorway, a peculiar, frightening sound akin to the growl a large beast makes just before it strikes. It set the small hairs at the back of Eliott's head on end, sent a chill shiver through him as if he had been struck with a bucketful of freezing water.
He felt the passage of air, no more. The kind of rocking one
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feels in a small car when one is passed by a truck six times the size. His eyes, half-glazed with lust, picked up a dark blur.
For her part, Kathleen heard and saw nothing, concentrating as she was on her task, until she felt her scalp scraped, a violent pull on her hair that jerked her head up and back, stretching her spine unmercifully
She found herself staring into depthless black eyes she was certain she had seen before but which were so frightening to view at such close range, all coherent thought was flung from her mind.
Tracy got the call at his office and bolted like a sprinter. His father's voice trickled down the line sick and frightened and vulnerable. He had never heard his father sound like that except on the night Tracy's mother died in a godawful smashup on the Long Island Expressway, the Volvo slammed from the rear by an enormous twenty-wheel semi, abruptly blocking out all light like an eclipse as it slewed obliquely across the slick tarmac, its frame shuddering, squealing like a shot animal.
Louis Richter, driving, was protected by the collapsing steering wheel but his wife, his beloved Marjory, was thrown free of her safety belt, the moonng ripped right off the car wall as the high square grill of the semi rudely invaded the Volvo's interior and she was flung headlong through the windscreen. At least part of her. Because of the peculiar gravity well set up by the car's momentum, her legs were jammed like sticks against the dash, imprisoned. Tracy's father awoke inside the wrecked auto with those bloody amputated members for company.
As for the child, Tracy, he had been curled up, fast asleep on the driver's side of the back seat. That was fortunate for the entire right rear end of the car was torn away as if from the bite of a voracious monster.
His head had come up but the momentum of their slide had brought the side of his head into traumatic contact with the edge of the front seat back He had awakened in a hospital room, knowing nothing of his mother's death until much later
He wondered now whose experience had been worse, his or his father's. To have been there at the moment of her death and
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to have been unconscious, seemed to him cruel beyond his understanding. As a child, he had often dreamed of saving her. But then again at the hospital Louis Richter had inexplicably turned his head away from his son and soon after that the nurse came and took him outside into the squeaky hallway, leaden with pathos, sodden with tears.
'Here,' Louis Richter said when he had closed the door behind his son, 'take this.' And had dropped the bug into Tracy's palm.
'What's the matter?'
'I don't want it anymore,' he said. He looked tired and more drawn than the last time Tracy had seen him.
'You're finished already?'
'Don't you listen to me when I talk to you?' his father shouted.
Tracy stood looking at his father for a moment. He tried to summon up some more noble emotion but it was only pity he felt, swirled like oil slicking water's surface.
'I don't want any part of it,' Louis Richter said more softly. He walked away towards the living room, sitting down heavily on the leather sofa. His fingers reached out, picked the gunmetal lighter up off the highly polished driftwood coffee table. He flicked it open and closed while he talked.
Tracy picked an easy chair covered in faded ochre corduroy, sat on its edge. 'Dad?' he moved his head, trying to pick up his father's deeply shadowed eyes.
'I have to go into the hospital soon," the old man said as if to himself. 'Blood transfusions.' He snorted, the outraged sound a beast makes at the last, before it falls to its knees to die. 'I know why they want me in there.' He took a deep breath. 'It's just a matter of time now.' And laughed thinly. 'It was always a matter of time, after your mother passed away. All that time to think of what I had done to her.'
'Dad,' Tracy said, appalled, 'it wasn't your fault.'
'Oh, yes," Louis Richter said. 'Yes, it was. I was driving. It was pissing down rain, mist like smoke coming up from the macadam. Cars came in and out of that junk like ghosts riding the wind. I didn't see that semi bearing down on me, didn't
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Hknow anything until it hit and we went swinging. I tried to gain control but it was impossible. And then your mother began to scream.' The flame went on, off, like a signal to someone unknown. 'And when I wake up at three in the morning as I always do - that's what I hear: your mother's scream in every whine, creak, siren of the city.'
He looked up at Tracy then. 'I'll tell you something, Trace. For a time, I thought about going after that bastard driver myself. He was doing seventy in that weather. Can you believe it? Seventy! And Drive Safely stickers all over his goddamned machine.' There were tears in his eyes now, clear and reflective. 'You remember when I went away to Corfu, just after?' Tracy nodded wordlessly. 'That's when I made the decision. If I had stayed here another day, I would've built something to blow the sonovabitch up.' He gave a thin smile. 'Imagine that. All my training washed away by one vengeful act. I couldn't do it, Trace, d'you understand?' His fist clenched whitely around the large lighter. It trembled when he spoke. 'So much of me wanted to ... to do something to make amends for what I'd done ... or failed to do.'
